The inciting incident in your novel is going to be the event, early in the story, that will interrupt life-as-we-know-it for your protagonist. In general, you might think of the inciting incident as the kick-off to the plot. It will present your character with a choice from which they cannot turn back. A commonly-used example…
In between some fiction writing and my usual blogging/guest-article writing, I’ve written some poems recently, which got me thinking: Prose writers, listen to me, your writing will improve (I promise) if you read poetry. And if you write it, it’s guaranteed. And now I’m thinking I really need to offer a class called Poetry for…
Real quick, before I get into strategies for writing a prologue, I want to address the whole prologue thing. Basically, agents like them or hate them. Readers love them or skip them. People have strong feelings about prologues and you should be aware of the general discussion before you publish a book with one or…
If you’re just starting to submit to literary magazines, congratulations! This is an exciting time and you should be proud of yourself for doing the hard work of writing and the brave work of putting yourself out there for appraisal by strangers. It’s gutsy and worthwhile. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t think writers need…
A farmhouse, a beach, the principal’s office, church. These are the kinds of places we think about when we think about writing setting. We choose a location for our scene and then we contemplate what sensory details we might incorporate to describe it. We consider the lighting, the weather, the color of the furniture. But…